


In Between Days

by hotmess_ex_press



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, honestly is this even angst? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 04:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15065114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmess_ex_press/pseuds/hotmess_ex_press
Summary: Jae feels a bit like a ghost, haunting the place they met, people becoming so accustomed to his presence he seems like nothing more than the steady drip-drip of a broken faucet or a well-loved painting hanging above a mantle, simply, unquestionably, consistently,there.





	In Between Days

**Author's Note:**

> uuummm the title is definitely taken from In Between Days by the Cure.
> 
> Soulmate AU where your timer, which shows how long you have to live, stops at 21 if you haven't met your soulmate, and starts again when you do. Is that confusing? Probably. Oh well.

Every morning Jae clears his throat, picks up his guitar, and walks to the same street corner, where the cherry trees blossom in spring and crystal snowflakes caress the wind in winter.

He figures he knows the cracked sidewalks and the ever-shifting storefronts better than he knows the bumps and divots of his own name, the subtle lilts and habits of his own voice.

After all, he's come here every day for the past six years.

In print, it seems like forever. When he says it out loud, those 2,190-some days might as well be a whole lifetime for all the things he's missed out on. But it's fine, it's okay. He's sure it will pay off.

It has been six years since Jae's timer started ticking.

He has sixty-one years, seven months, twenty-five days, four hours, two minutes, and thirty-six seconds to find his soulmate again.

Compared to that, six years is nothing.

Most people who are searching for their soulmates travel, they dance from city to city with desperate eyes and hope that dwindles daily. They trot around the globe using their daddy's plastic and their dead aunt's cash and loans their friends never expect to get paid back, until their pockets are so unfailingly empty they have no choice but to trudge back home like a kicked puppy. It's pointless, Jae figures. If both halves of a whole are scampering all over, looking for each other, odds are they'll just miss each other, time and time again.

The universe likes to play people.

His best friend, Younghyun, says he's stupid, that he needs to move on and trust they'll find each other again. It's ridiculous to just wait and pine on a street corner when he could be _doing_ something. He could be doing something with the guitar that now feels like home, something that brings more than just a few odd bills and coins and a heavy heart to the table.

Jae feels a bit like a ghost, haunting the place they met, people becoming so accustomed to his presence he seems like nothing more than the steady drip-drip of a broken faucet or a well-loved painting hanging above a mantle, simply, unquestionably, consistently, _there_.

He curses himself, curses the sky, curses whatever sadistic force that controls them for letting his soulmate slip through his fingers.

Blames everything and everyone except the man, himself.

The feeling of meeting _him_ was unlike anything else. It was like bottled wind, delicious breezes cavorting with the scent of wildflowers and fresh-baked bread, and liquid sunlight, pure and sweet and cloying, filling up every inch of him, warming the tips of his fingers to the curves of his cheekbones to his very soul. Honey-luscious and mad marvelous and psychedelic wonderful.

_Oh_ , if he could go back.

The feeling of looking down at his wrist, not fifteen minutes after the man had walked away with an otherworldly smile and a few hopeful words, to realize time, _his_ time, his _life_ , had started up again, seconds sneaking past dizzyingly quickly and breathtakingly slowly all at once, was another sensation entirely.

Imagine crashing through nothingness with the weight of entire worlds. Jarring, painful, excruciating. Knowing the easy route to a happily-ever-after was a few miles back and you _can't. Turn. Around._ The moment every child dreams of just passed you by, and you _missed_ it, and you can't go back, you can't change time no matter how much of it you think you have.

But Jae is willing to take the _not-so-easy_ route, if it means he can see _that smile_ one more time.

Once, Jae thought he had time. He was just like Younghyun, a twenty-one year old man suspended, unable to move forward, the numbers on his wrist glaring up at him unflinchingly. Inky black strokes etched into his skin, a constant reminder of what he hadn't found yet. Watching the world twist and shape itself into something _more_ , more beautiful and more advanced and more _doomed_ , but being unable to evolve himself.

(Younghyun only has eleven years after he finds his soulmate. He says he trusts they'll be thrown into each other's paths, so he won't go hunting for them, but maybe Younghyun, big bad Young K with the voice like an angel's and the disposition of the devil, that one boy with pretty eyes and a silver tongue your mother always warns you about, is scared of something. Maybe Younghyun, with all his talk of stars and faith, is scared of death.)

Sometimes Jae will wake up all feverish and tangled and too aware of his own selfish wants. Other times he is greeted by morning light and expectations and clear, picture-perfect memories that leave him with a soft smile. Once in a blue moon, he'll be jerked to consciousness with a too-fast-too-hard-too-loud heartbeat and a cold sweat glistening on his skin.

It's always the same name he whispers, in a puff of breath, as a longing wish, scared and lonely and hurting.

Wonpil.

Wonpil.

_Wonpil, Wonpil, Wonpil, Wonpil, Wonpil, Wonpil, Wonpil._

He's ready.

Jae is _so_ ready to be in love. He wants lazy mornings and big adventures, swooping butterflies and all that fairytale shit. Craves it more with every night he falls asleep in an empty bed, all the sticky-sweet love songs crooning to him when he turns on the radio, each time a spike of jealousy courses through him seeing happy couples on the street.

Wonpil travels, but not because he's chasing someone.

At that point where things are so bad, when life is truly taking away everything you have and leaving you with the streets and a broken soul, something shifts. Walls and borders fall away, and maybe you are truly free.

Wonpil wants to paint his name in every corner of the globe.

He has himself and his worn hiking boots and pockets full of songs and stardust, with none of the drawbacks, the _what-if_ 's and _if-only_ 's that come with _caring_. He is truly free, and Jae admires that.

(Admires, but never emulates. He is too afraid.)

Maybe that's why Wonpil hasn't come back. Maybe he knows what having a soulmate entails, and that includes loving and caring for and thinking about someone other than yourself. And maybe, just maybe, Wonpil isn't ready for that.

No matter.

Jae can wait longer. He can wait his entire life if he has to. He'll wait on the very same street corner, guitar in hand, singing the words that were once just that, _words_ , but now are dreams and desires and stories that weave themselves into and around and through every fiber of his being. _Words_ that are now just as much a part of him as his hopes, his passions, his fears.

He doesn't sing for money anymore.

"Why do you do this to yourself?" Younghyun asks, again and again and again. He receives a different answer each time.

_To practice._

_I'm missing a part of me, and finding it the best way I know how._

_I'm forgiving himself for letting him go the first time._

_Because we promised._

And Younghyun rolls his eyes every time, but Jae can sense the longing. Jae understands, he really does. He knows how unfair it is, how cruel the numbers encircling Younghyun's wrist must be, an everlasting implication of how short a time he has with his soulmate, like an intricate, ethereal handcuff, binding him to his fate. Eleven years could never be enough. Twenty, a thousand, an eternity, it could never be enough. And the difference between 67 and eleven is staggering.

_I want to cheat the universe_ , Younghyun had confessed to him once. The air was sticky with smoke, summer, and alcohol, or else those words never would have left his mouth. _I want to change time_.

_Me, too_ , Jae whispered. _Me, too_.

It was a scene from a romance, the evening they met.

The sun soaking into the mountains, casting lazy rays of color, effortless pinks and reckless oranges and majestic golds streaking across the sky like watercolor dripping from an artist's paintbrush, tinting the darkened canvas of night. Light just _bent_ towards Wonpil, threading through his hair, collecting on the highest points of his cheekbones and the swell of his bottom lip. Blooming cherry trees perfumed the air, silky petals swirling around them, delicate, unearthly in their careful beauty. Just like magic.

And then there was Wonpil, with his smiles more blinding than the setting sun and all his cherry-ice cream glory, standing in front of Jae and clapping whenever he finished a song. There was Wonpil, with his velvety voice that could put sirens to shame, singing along like there was no one in the world but him and Jae. Wonpil, made immortal by his jewel-bright eyes and his rose-red backstory and the way he looked at Jae like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

_Will we see each other again?_ Jae had wondered aloud, guitar slung across his back, worrying on his bottom lip. His heart still beating, fast, but light, as he took in the sunset painting Wonpil in its finest hues. He could get lost in the starry, glittering galaxies that are Wonpil's eyes.

_Yes_ , Wonpil replied, silky voice, just-right and utterly delectable, so much more than just perfection. He could be a dream, and Jae would sleep forever in blissful oblivion. _We will, Jae. I can feel it._

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda wanted to do a thing with this au about young k and his whole problem but if people hate this i'm not sure.
> 
> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, I haven't really written like this before so feedback is nice.


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